Just-released and upcoming Canadian non-fiction for fall 2013 includes subject matter as varied as political marketing, World War I, murder, Christianity, threats to Canada's scientific community, how blood informs societies' workings, immigrant culture, and hard metal rock. Penned by seasoned investigative journalists and historians as well as fiction greats, these books look fascinating to us.
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Ken McGoogan's 50 Canadians Who Changed the World starts off our list on an inspiring note; the collection of 50 includes Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, John Kenneth Galbraith, Naomi Klein, Marshall McLuhan, Stephen Lewis, Roméo Dallaire, Glenn Gould, David Suzuki, Mike Lazaridis, Margaret Atwood, Oscar Peterson, and Leonard Cohen. The Toronto Star heralds McGoogan as "the rightful successor to populist historian Pierre Berton."
Susan Delacourt's Shopping for Votes is a look inside the world of political marketing in our country, where Canadians are increasingly seen as consumers rather than citizens. Also concerned with politics is Michael Ignatieff's memoir Fire and Ashes, which he has said was his toughest book to write to date; Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa calls it "exceptionally insightful."
Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919 and Nixon in China, offers us The War That Ended Peace, which explores the "huge political and technological changes, national decisions, and just as important, the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster"—the disaster of WWI. Charlotte Gray is back with The Massey Murder, which covers not just the sensational trial following the 1915 murder of wealthy socialite Charles Massey by his house servant, Carrie Davies, but the social justice questions swirling around it.
Christianity—and its contribution to the world's problems—is the subject of Paul Kivel's Living in the Shadow of the Cross. Award-winning journalist Chris Turner takes aim at the Harper government in The War on Science, drawing on interviews with scientists across the country to argue that Harper's policies are a threat to the ideals of the Enlightenment and a disgrace in terms of environmental stewardship. Michael Mikulak investigates food politics in The Politics of the Pantry, analyzing the various stories we hear today about food, sustainability, and what matters in how we eat.
Lawrence Hill, best known for his work of fiction The Book of Negroes, examines how societies' ideas about blood inform their practices as they pertain to "identity, belonging, gender, race, class, citizenship, athletic superiority, and nationhood" in Blood: The Stuff of Life. Another author known for her fiction, Denise Chong (The Concubine's Children), takes a close look in Lives of the Family at early Chinese-Canadian immigrants whose identities were rooted in their home country and futures dependent on adjusting to Canadian society.
Sean Kelley provides an insider's view of the hard rock industry by grounding Metal on Ice in interviews with bands like "Helix, Anvil, Coney Hatch, Killer Dwarfs, Harem Scarem, and Honeymoon Suite, as well as prominent journalists, VJs, and industry insiders." And prize-winning reporter, novelist, and CBC broadcaster Paul Vasey's The River Detroit is a memoir about Windsor, Ontario—what defines it and why Vasey loves it.